


Has to Be Me

by strangeallure



Series: Yet to Come [1]
Category: Wonder Woman (Movies - Jenkins)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Collection: Purimgifts Day 1, F/M, Final Battle, Steve Trevor Lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-26
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:16:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29705316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strangeallure/pseuds/strangeallure
Summary: The fight between Diana and Ares goes a little differently.
Relationships: Diana (Wonder Woman)/Steve Trevor
Series: Yet to Come [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2183892
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15
Collections: Purimgifts 2021





	Has to Be Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cat2000](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cat2000/gifts).



> I was so excited to write my first Wonder Woman fic for you, and I hope it helps you start your Purim celebrations (or just your weekend) off right. Diana and Steve are such a wonderful couple, and it was fun to twist canon into giving them a better ending. Happy Purim!

One moment, Diana is using her lasso to fight Ares and throw him to the ground. The next moment, his metal fist closes around her neck.

He sneers, “Is that all you have to offer?” before slamming her to the ground, right into a German tank. 

She’s disoriented for only an instant. It’s enough time for him to bend two giant bars of steel to his will. He fastens them around her, fixing her to the tarmac beneath, immobile and helpless as he rises above her.

"It is futile to imagine you can win. Give up, Diana."

She wriggles inside the metal restraints covering most of her body. Her fingers scrabble uselessly against the Lasso of Hestia. Her eyes flit across the fire and chaos all around her. 

Diana’s gaze catches on Chief, Sameer and Charlie, huddled behind a tank in front of Dr. Maru’s laboratory. They’re about to go in, destroy the doctor’s supplies and notes, no matter the personal cost.

They are not children of the gods, they don’t have her powers, and yet they’re risking certain death for the good of mankind. Their example jolts something within her, and Diana’s chest tightens as her mind pieces together Steve’s last words before he ran off.

_ “It has to be me.” His hands around her arms anchor her. “I can save today.  _ You  _ can save the world.” Amidst the devastation, his smile turns bright, adoring, like simply looking at her lightens the load of what he’s about to do. “I wish we had more time.” Even as he pulls away, he presses something into her hands. “I love you.” _

Diana feels the power within herself swirling, gathering, compounding, until it clenches into the fist of a god. With a fierce cry, all that power explodes. She grips her lasso tight even as the inhuman strength of her body shatters the metal restraining her.

She knows what Steve’s about to do, feels it through an invisible bond connecting them as if it’s her own thoughts. Diana knows what she has to do.

With more might than she’s ever felt coursing through her veins, she flings her lasso into the dark skies. The sheer force of its speed turns the rope into something sharper than any blade as it surges towards Steve’s aircraft. Diana bounds across the asphalt, hot on its tail, blind to the mayhem, machinery and soldiers between them, nothing but pure instinct driving her.

She doesn’t slow down when the lasso meets the metal of the aircraft, when it slices the cockpit clean off, just as Steve fires his bullet into the plane’s fully loaded cargo bay.

Everything happens in slow motion despite Diana feeling like she’s gaining speed. The cockpit breaks off from the rest of the plane. Steve’s body plummets through the air. All gas bombs go off at once.

Just as the blast is about to hit Steve’s falling body, Diana reaches him, curling herself around him in mid-air, becoming his shield, his armor, using the momentum of her own body to get them away from the lethal explosion.

Steve’s bleeding and panting and groaning in her arms, but that just means he’s still alive.

The air around them vibrates. Diana knows it’s Ares before he speaks. Quickly, she deposits Steve’s body in an abandoned jeep behind her, tucking him into the back to keep him safe. It simply has to provide enough protection while she faces off against her half-brother. It has to. It will.

“Look at this world.” Ares’ voice is distorted and cold. “Mankind it is, not me.” And he’s right, this is mankind. Fighting and killing. Running a machinery of death and destruction. Giving into their basest urges. “They are ugly, filled with hatred, weak.” Like all good lies, it’s wrapped in small truths. This airfield, this battlefield, is dominated by the worst mankind is capable of, but Diana has seen so much more, so much better. The veterans back in London; the Belgian families after they freed their village; Chief and Sameer and Charlie, who’re on a mission to destroy Maru’s laboratory right now instead of trying to save themselves.

An unwavering certainty washes over Diana. She will defeat Ares because she has the power of truth, of community, because she fights to protect instead of destroy. “You’re wrong about them,” she says, walking calmly through fire and chaos. “They’re everything you say, but so much more.”

When Ares launches himself at her, surrounded not by allies but by a cluster of lifeless metal spears, Diana knows she’s going to win. She chose to be the guardian of mankind. She will defeat the last of the gods to save them.

When she pulls Steve from the jeep, the pain in his eyes gives way to wonder and his heartbeat is erratic but strong against her chest. Diana knows it’s all worth it.

“You were right,” she tells him. “It had to be you who flew the plane.” She swallows thickly. “You just forgot that it had to be me who saved you.”


End file.
